Surely there is a gradation at some point along which a word like "shill" becomes applicable. I don't know where that line is. Is anyone who says something that aligns with a corporate interest plus takes a million dollars from said interest a "shill"?

I like a good muckraking as much as the next guy but in the end, judging individual actors as "shills" or whatever obscures the important issues, which are systemic. It may even be that tarring a few people as shills and frauds is a big mistake insofar as the rest of us then take that as a license to let ourselves off the hook.

In my opinion academia, medicine, and journalism (to pick three pretty important institutions) are all corrupt in this systemic way, a way that has little to do with individual choice (apart from a few ethically gifted souls whom we can all admire but mostly won't imitate) and much to do with human nature. And this is a big, big deal because it deeply affects what those institutions are producing. Think of all the work done on how big pharma gets doctors to push their product into people who don't need it, or about how journalists are mollified by "access" (friendly personal contact) with powerful people they're covering.

The really great thing about what researchers like Ariely are doing is that it could lead to an objective basis for preventing the conditions for corruption from arising in the first place. Can you imagine what a difference that would make to society?